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The Open Hardware Repository ohwr.org is a place on the web for electronics designers at experimental physics facilities to collaborate on open hardware designs, much in the philosophy of the free software movement.

The Manifesto on the ohr-support project wiki page explains the numerous advantages to working in a completely open environment, while on these same ohr-support wiki pages you can find how you can set up your own project. Note that all information on this site is accessible to anyone; you will not be able to access more material by registering.

The CERN Open Hardware Licence governs the use, copying, modification and distribution of hardware design documentation, and the manufacture and distribution of products. Other open licence types may be used for projects on the OHR site.

There are eleven instititutes leading the different projects: CERN, Soleil, GSI, Brazillian Light Source, University of Bristol, Warsaw University of Technology, University of Zurich, University of Pavia, Rockefeller University, University of Cape Town, Heidelberg University.And there are 16 commercial companies are involved who develop, produce and/or test open hardware products.

In December 2012 sixteen companies from eleven countries were actively using the OHR site to develop or produce open hardware, software and drivers. These companies may be paid for the open developments. Actually in July 2014 the number is the same.

Note: we think that there is curently no perfect copyleft license for gateware. We are trying to contribute to remedy that situation. See GPL/LGPL for HDL: open questions. In the meantime we are using LGPL as many other people do, including many projects in opencores.org.